Mungo Park, the famous 18th century Scottish explorer, had few good things to say about the Muslims he encountered on his journeys through the Sahara. He spoke of the Moors as “a people who study mischief as a science and exult in the miseries and misfortunes of their fellow creatures.” “Treacherous,” “malevolent,” “ferocious” and “fanatical” were some of the adjectives he reserved for the Muslims of North Africa’s great desert, that “fearful void.”